recent aural epiphanies

'Better Man' by Pearl Jam. What a beauty, emotive lyrics, rather simple composition but you only have to listen to the many live versions available (Live On Two Legs, Live On Ten Legs, Pearl Jam Live, PJ20 OST) to guage the mass of affection for this number. Delving in to the origins of this song it was interesting to discover this was one of Eddie Vedder's first songs he ever wrote, on his own in San Diego, before he bought his one-way ticket to Seattle.

I admire the way Pearl Jam have done things, always veering away from the commercial hit-machine they always could have been post-Ten. It hasn't always made for the best music, for all the memorable moments there have been some rather forgetable; I can only just about remember that Avacado album. Seemingly aware of the potential popularity of "Better Man", they bury this track towards the end of an interesting yet somewhat bleak Vitalogy album - in between songs about Bugs and foxy mop-handle mothers.

It's hard to figure out if Pearl Jam are over-rated or under-rated.

When I saw Pearl Jam at a festival in the UK just a few years ago, I felt somewhat let down in the aftermath. Not least because the following night at Reading opened with a cover of Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive, bound to have gone over the heads of so many 20-somethings, but back in Leeds, I was quite unaware of the circumstances - not just that this was their first festival slot since the fatal Roskilde disaster, but that it is a band with a very large reportoire, one they make full use of and that means they don't do the same gig twice. Ever.

That does mean, however, that not every Pearl Jam fan I bump in to has had the pleasure of seeing them steam-roll through their awesomely epic version of Neil Young's 'Keep On Rocking In the Free World', a song I've had in my head now for literally years.